Friday, March 22, 2013

With the news that a council in Devon was set to formally ban apostrophes from its street signs, many custodians of the language were up in arms. According to The Daily Telegraph, the move "sparked fury". One person felt more than fury; Mary de Vere Taylor felt a mixture of confusion, patriotism and self-doubt all in the space of a few lines:

"It's almost as though somebody with a giant eraser is literally trying
to erase punctuation from our consciousness," she said.
"To me there's something terribly British and terribly reassuring about
well-written and well-punctuated writing.
"Some may say I should get a life and get out more but if I got out more
and saw place names with no apostrophes where there should be I shudder to
think how I'd react."

The image of an actual, literal, giant eraser, replacing the gun barrel of a Chieftain tank, going around the highways and byways (but mostly byways) of Devon rubbing out apostrophes, paid for by the council tax of honest residents, is one that will stay with me to the grave. Largely because I've just made it up in my own head and am now a bit scared. But that's beside the point. These things matter to lots of people and not all of them are mad.

A year ago, Lindsay Johns of the Daily Mail and Evening Standard (and writer of a few pieces I've had a go at before) bemoaned the disappearance of the apostrophe from the name of the bookshop Waterstone's. In his article for the Mail he sounds like a man who's washed down his Weetabix with a few too many dictionaries, arguing "My stance here is not one of supercilious grammatical pedantry. For me, this is about something bigger. This is about the debt we owe both to the English language (as custodians of an ineffably rich, august and venerable tongue) and also to future generations".

This all sounds great and even quite touching, until you start to look at what he's so passionate about: a little squiggle. The apostrophe is actually - as David Crystal, the bearded lord of language, explains on Newsnight here and on his own blog here - a bit of a late arrival in the punctuation pantheon, only becoming standardised in the 19th Century.

Crystal goes on to explain the problem in a bit more detail on his blog:

It's impossible to say how long the apostrophe will last. For almost a
thousand years of its history, English writing did very well without it.
During the 19th century it came to be seen as obligatory, and the rules
governing its use were formed. But during the 20th, its role became
questioned. Was it really needed? It was sometimes useful in
distinguishing meanings, but it seems it could be left out without
causing ambiguity most of the time.

So, when Lindsay Johns and other punctuation police get so excited about the apostrophe as a symbol of our great language's mighty and rich history, they are probably overdoing it a little bit. Just as poor Mary de Vere Taylor said to the Telegraph, there's "something terribly British" about clinging on to outward symbols of a fading past.

So, can we do without the apostrophe? Yes and no. In this age of flashy-looking fonts and online search engines, the apostrophe tends to get in the way, either looking a bit incongruous or messing up an otherwise seamless stream of code. We can also, generally speaking, get by without it in most contexts, because it offers clarification about ownership on pretty rare occasions.

But, again pointed out by Crystal, it's currently part of what we consider to be standard English punctuation, so it has a status and value which can't be ignored:

The old order still rules, and has to be respected. Omitting an
apostrophe may not cause a problem in a text message, but it can cause a
huge problem in essays, job applications, and other kinds of formal
writing. Not because it makes meaning unclear, but simply because it
goes against what society considers to be acceptable English. Students
have to be taught how to manage this situation, so that they know what's
expected of them.

I'm all in favour of ditching apostrophes altogether, but while they're part of the current system of punctuation, you can expect your work handed back with red rings around errant or missing apostrophes. Otherwise you could end up like this poor family, worrying about whether their teenage sons are really eating their pet cats...

The lack of an apostrophe has the potential to cause even more alarming misunderstandings (Letters, 21 March). While away on holiday I received a message from my teenage boys at home, declaring: "We have completely run out of food and are so desperate we are going to have to eat the cats."
Adrian Brodkin, London

As a lexicographer at Merriam-Webster in the USA, she is well-placed to offer an overview of this, because as well as helping provide definitions for words, the Merriam-Webster has taken to tracking the words that are looked up at given moments or across longer periods of time. To put it simply (and with a degree of exaggeration), they have an insight into what the American public is thinking about - or checking that they know about - as they think it.

You can see spikes in certain words around key moments in the US presidential campaign if you track back through the tweets of @PeterSokolowski, or the prominence of certain words around other major news events, but it's the overview of the ten years that follow the Iraq invasion that Stamper concentrates on. So, we can see early appearances for the famous (and non-existent) WMDs. Then, later on, we find waterboarding and roadmap, alongside the supposed reason for the whole affair, democracy. The article is a great read and really useful for those of you looking at how and why language changes for ENGA3.

Who cares about English? While this is a question I'm increasingly asking myself - especially when I get given A level essays two weeks late, written on Hello Kitty notepaper and handed in with a cheery "It's crap!" - this post isn't part of my usual moaning about students these days and the need to do lots of work for the exam. Well sort of...

Who cares about English? This time, the question isn't aimed at the heavens, but at a panel of experts and kind-of experts. And the answer of course should be, "We all do", or at the very least, "I don't really care, but I can do a very good impression of caring for the purposes of my exam".

Anyway, have a look here where you can watch (and read the answers from) a panel discussion between four language lovers, including one of my favourite people, Henry Hitchings, and the rather unfortunately named Prudence Raper, from the almost as unfortunate Queen's English Society.

The questions they're addressing in this discussion are:“What are the effects of social media, such as Facebook, on English?” and “What is English, given that it is spoken in so many different countries?”, which are exactly the kinds of things a soon-to-be-revising A2 student should be thinking about.

There's a short and informative piece by David Shariatmadari in today's Guardian about the changing terminology used to label and describe people of different sexual orientation. In the comment piece, he talks about the terms that have developed over time and the arguments about such language.

Linking his points to a wider discussion of the role of language in shaping or reflecting people's attitudes to sexuality, he asks "Does language change politics, or is it the other way round? Or perhaps
language is more like fashion, in having something to do with prevailing
attitudes, but not, ultimately, being all that important".

It's a question we've looked at in A2 English language lessons recently, particularly around the language of race and discrimination. Shariatmadari goes on to raise this too.

Language certainly feels important if you've just been shouted at by a
racist or a homophobe. But it's worth asking whether zero tolerance of
the N-word, for instance, might be a precursor to, or an after-effect
of, more enlightened thinking. Or whether in the US, where it is perhaps
the biggest linguistic taboo of all, racism has, in fact, ceased to be a
problem.

When we've looked at Political Correctness (PC) and the movement to change language or highlight its potential problems, we've often speculated on the relationship between language and attitudes. Can removing bad words remove bad ideas from people's heads? Or does it just create a vacuum for another bad word to rush into?

Shariatmadari argues what is essentially a reflectionist perspective: "Language is the imprint of our culture. It encodes – though it does not determine – the character of the age". The language that is used to label people who are gay, bisexual, transgendered or questioning is changing to reflect the range of sexual identities that are now gaining prominence (but were probably always there) rather than necessarily shaping identities.

There was another article on this topic a few weeks ago, which you can find here. It's good to have a range of references when you're answering ENGA3 questions about Language Change and Language Discourses, so have a read and make a few notes...

Books wot I have writ

I've edited a book with the English & Media Centre, snappily entitled Language: an EMC Student Handbook on Key Topics and Theories. It features 10 chapters, written by leading linguists (and one by me) and covers key topic areas for A level English Language and undergraduate study. It's out now and available from here. Personally, I think it's a damn good read. You can get the Kindle version here:

The English & Media Centre has published a download written by Marcello Giovanelli and me, called An Introduction to Language Frameworks. It's aimed at AS students and teachers and introduces key frameworks for English Language A level. You can get it from here.

Marcello and I have also written a Gender download as one of a series of 'satellites' to go with the Language Frameworks pack. You can find that one here.